You used example industries of legal and financial and even in those, passion and innovation are force multipliers. The domain-specific systems in these industr

You used example industries of legal and financial and even in those, passion and innovation are force multipliers. The domain-specific systems in these industries are every bit as ill-defined and open as software, it just looks very, very different. As a layperson to these industries, most people are only exposed to the pedestrian mainstream aspects, kind of like being exposed to only the teenager manning the Geek Squad desk and bringing them a WinPC to defrag to "speed up". Dig not that many layers deep, and you'll expose the ill-defined and open systems in those industries. This is true nearly everywhere in nearly any human endeavor. This is why the Japanese kodawari concept (meticulous care in craftsmanship, design and service) is even feasible across an entire culture for centuries and counting. Once you really start caring about the customer, your entire center of gravity in your relationship with them changes, and you start stepping through the process through their eyes to anticipate their needs and empathize with how they likely feel through the process you set up for them to go through. This is very different from the Western "attention to detail" concept. Personally for me, the Western concept has less of a connotation with focus upon caring and empathizing to "listen for" the details, and more upon a situational awareness to "watch for" the legalistic steps of a spelled-out procedure (perhaps rooted in an Industrial Age paradigm?).